Events Calendar

Jan 26, 2025

2:00 PM - 4:15 PM

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Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Spring Semester! Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry....

Feb 4, 2025

7:00 PM

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Tramaine Suubi will read from her debut book of poetry, phases. Tramaine Suubi is a multilingual writer from Kampala, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has published creative writing in 16 literary anthologies, magazines, journals, and reviews — and counting. Her debut full-length poetry collection titled phases, was published in January 2025 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Her second full-length poetry collection titled stages, is forthcoming in January 2026. Trama...

Feb 6, 2025

7:00 PM

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Iowa Writers' Workshop alum, Caitlin Roach will read from her new book of poetry, Surveille, in conversation with Rachel Yoder. Caitlin Roach is a queer poet from Southern California. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, jubilat, Colorado Review, Best New Poets, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and The Iowa Review, among other journals. Her work has received prizes and recognition from the Granum Foundation, the W.B. Yeats Society of New York for the Yeats Poetry Prize, Narrative...

Feb 7, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

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Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Feb 21, 2025

7:00 PM

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Iowa Writers' Workshop alum, Steven Duong will read from his debut book of poetry, At the End of the World There is a Pond. Steven Duong is a writer from San Diego. He is the author of At the End of the World There is a Pond, published by W. W. Norton in January 2025. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Guernica, and the Yale Review. His short fiction is published in Catapult, The Drift, and The Best American Short Stories 2024. The recipient of fellowships from The Acad...

Feb 23, 2025

2:00 PM - 4:15 PM

Save to My Events

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Spring Semester! Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry....

Feb 27, 2025

7:00 PM

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Authors, Lewis Robinson and Aaron McCollough will read from their newest books. Lewis Robinson is the author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories and Water Dogs. His newest book, The Islanders was published by Islandport Press in 2023. He is a Writers' Workshop alum and winner of a Whiting Award, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Book Review, and on the Nationa...

Mar 7, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Mar 7, 2025

7:00 PM

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Authors, Alyssa Perry and Daisy Atterbury will read from their newest work. Alyssa Perry is a writer, editor, and teacher from Iowa. She is the author of Oily Doily (Bench Editions, 2024). Her writing appears with Annulet, The Canary, Coma, Fence, Mercury Firs, River Styx, the Experimental Sound Studio, and other venues. Perry is poetry editor at the Cleveland Review of Books and an editor at the small press publisher Rescue Press. She is an alum of the Writers' Workshop and lives in Ohio, ...

Mar 10, 2025

7:00 PM

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Writers' Workshop alum, Curtis Sittenfeld will read from her latest book, Show Don't Tell A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep “[Sittenfeld’s] perfectly contained stories are a joy.”—Booklist, starred review Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels: Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland,...

Mar 11, 2025

7:00 PM

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Authors, GC Waldrep & Karen An-Hwei Lee will read from their latest work. G.C. Waldrep was born and raised in the South. He earned his BA from Harvard University, a PhD in history from Duke University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. His collections of poetry include Goldbeater’s Skin (2003), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry; Disclamor (2007); Archicembalo (2009), winner of the Dorset Prize; Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (2011), a collaborative book of poems wi...

Mar 23, 2025

2:00 PM - 4:15 PM

Save to My Events

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Spring Semester! Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry....

Mar 24, 2025

6:00 PM

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Mary Jo Bang and Yuki Tanaka will discuss their translation of, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi, the first book of poems by the great Japanese surrealist to be published in English. Mary Jo Bang is the author of nine books of poems—including A Film in Which I Play Everyone, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, a PEN Voelcker Award, and the Heartland Booksellers Award, A Doll for Throwing, and Elegy which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She’s pub...

Mar 31, 2025

7:00 PM

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Stuart Nadler will read from his new novel, Rooms for Vanishing. Stuart Nadler is a recipient of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation, and the author of two novels, Wise Men and The Inseparables, and a story collection, The Book of Life. His work has been named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, and an Amazon Book of the Year. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow and a Teachi...

Apr 2, 2025

7:00 PM

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Karen Russell will read from her new novel, The Antidote, in conversation with Kaveh Akbar. Karen Russell is the author of five books of fiction, including the NYT bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, and selected for the National B...

Apr 4, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Apr 9, 2025

7:00 PM

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Chris Offutt will read from his new novel, The Reluctant Sheriff. Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, population 200, a former mining town in the Appalachian hills. His books include Shifty's Boys, The Killing Hills, Country Dark, Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Good Brother, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and My Father the Pornographer. He wrote and produced scripts for True Blood, Weeds, and Treme.  His television work was nominated for an Emmy. His work is in many ant...

Apr 11, 2025

7:00 PM

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Writers' Workshop alum, Jonathan Thirkield will read from his latest book, Infinity Pool. Jonathan Thirkield's work explores the boundaries between the human language systems of poetry and code—as forms of expression and as structural models for being. His first collection of poetry, The Waker's Corridor, won the 2008 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. His newest collection, Infinity Pool, was published by the University of Chicago Press' Phoenix Poets series in September ...

Apr 17, 2025

7:00 PM

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Sanjena Sathian will read from her new novel, Goddess Complex, joined in conversation by Ren Arcamone. Sanjena Sathian is the author of the Goddess Complex, published by Penguin Press, and the critically acclaimed novel Gold Diggers, which was named a Top 10 Best Book of 2021 by the Washington Post and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. It won the Townsend Prize for Fiction. Her short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, On...

Apr 25, 2025

7:00 PM

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Writers' Workshop alum, Michelle Herman will read from her latest book, If You Say So. Michelle Herman's newest book, If You Say So, an essay collection, will be out in spring 2025. The author of nine previous books — the novels Missing, Dog, Devotion, and, most recently, Close-Up; the story collection A New and Glorious Life; three earlier collections of essays, The Middle of Everything, Stories We Tell Ourselves, and Like A Song; and a book for children, A Girl’s Guide to Life — she taugh...

Apr 27, 2025

2:00 PM - 4:15 PM

Save to My Events

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Spring Semester! Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry....

May 2, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

May 25, 2025

2:00 PM - 4:15 PM

Save to My Events

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Spring Semester! Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry....

Jun 6, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Jul 4, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Aug 1, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Sep 5, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Oct 3, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Nov 7, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...

Dec 5, 2025

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Save to My Events

Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces. Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists. Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each sessio...